Once Upon A Dream
by jenmichellex3
Summary: Derek has a dream about a beautiful girl, whom he desperately wants, but can't have. Mostly because of his inability to act himself when she's around. But, he isn't quite sure who the girl is. What happens when he realizes the girl in his dream is Casey? What does this mean to his relationship with her? And, what happens when Casey finds out?
1. Chapter 1

_A bright white light hit Derek's face. He put his hand up to block it, attempting to lessen the light and increase his vision, but as the light was coming from every direction, it was a hopeless cause. He couldn't see where he was at or where he was heading, but his feet seemed to lead him, as if they had eyes of their own for seeing. The light dimmed as he walked further down the narrow hallway. As he came to a halt, at what he could only assume was a bedroom door, he heard what he best deciphered as a very dramatic song with lots of pianos and violins emitting from the other side. Derek stood there for a moment, not exactly sure what he was supposed to do next. He attempted to walk away, but his feet wouldn't move. Since his feet had led him here and apparently wouldn't let him leave, he figured, he might as well knock. Perhaps the person on the other side would understand why he was here._

_The music stopped and he heard footsteps walking towards the door. He felt his heart hammering at an alarming rate as the doorknob opened and a girl appeared at the other side._

_He stood there for a moment, taking her in. He looked her up and down. She was wearing yoga pants that had the smallest trimming of purple at the waistline. And he saw, as his eyes came further up her body, a black and purple almost skin-tight shirt that matched. Damn, he thought, this girl has got an amazing body. She looked vaguely familiar, but, he wouldn't have been able to tell you where he knew her from. He must have stared at her breasts for a minute too long, because the girl cleared her throat. "Ahem?"_

_He looked at her face._

_"Can I help you?" She said, raising her eyebrows suspiciously._

_It was like he was watching himself as if he were outside of his body. He stood there awkwardly, not entirely sure what to do, which, for him, was weird. He somehow felt an automatic need to impress her._

_"Why are you listening to that stupid music?" Derek sneered at the girl._

_The girl stepped back. "For your information, that 'stupid music'" She started, putting air quotes around the words 'stupid' and 'music'"is one of the best classical pieces in the world. It's also good music. But of course, you wouldn't know anything about that, now, would you, Der?" She smirked as if she'd won a battle and put her hand on her hip._

_**Woah, wha - ? Okay, seriously who is this girl and why is she insulting me? Better question, in fact: Why am I insulting her?! Derek, man! Snap out of it! She's hot! Tell her something! Maybe about how hot she is! Something! **_

_Derek snorted. "I've heard better sounds come out of dogs."_

_Before Derek could yell at himself again, the entire scenery changed. He was suddenly on the other side of what he assumed to be the same girl's room, yet, not entirely sure how he'd gotten there. It was obviously a different day, as the girl was wearing a completely different outfit. And somehow, Derek thought, if it were even possible, she looked even hotter than she had before. She'd traded the yoga pants for a pair of jeans that hugged her every curve, and a long sleeved pink button down shirt. Her hair, which had previously been up in a very tight bun, now fell in sweet brunette curls at her chest. This time, however, Derek stopped himself from staring for too long._

_She was looking at him like she was ready to fight again. "Wh-what?" Derek said, trying but horribly failing confidence. What was it about this girl that made him act this way? He wasn't like this with most girls! _

**_Snap out of it, Derek! _**

_The girl raised her eyebrows at him and smirked. _

_**I wish she would stop doing that. It's obviously making me nervous or.. something. **  
_

_The girl opened her mouth to speak, but before she could -_

**BEEP BEEP BEEP**

The alarm was screaming determinedly in his ear. Derek moaned begrudgingly and turned over in his bed. Without bothering to look at the time, he slung his arm around his body and slammed the snooze button on the clock. Why couldn't that alarm have waited five more minutes to go off?! He turned back on his side and silently prayed that he could fall back asleep. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to go back to that dream. Who was that girl? Derek wondered, as his mind drifted aimlessly back into sleep. He didn't have much time to think any more after that, however, as 15 minutes had already passed and his alarm was going off again.

"Derek!" He heard, followed by a loud banging at his door, which meant that his step-mom, Nora, was attempting to wake him up and get him to shut off the alarm. "I'm up! I'm up!" Derek took a lot of energy to yell. Nora had gotten him the stupid alarm clock for his birthday last month, after she'd found out about Derek's 7th tardy at school. He'd planned on keeping it in the box it came with, and never really using it, until his step-sister, Casey, came and set it all up for him without his knowledge. Derek finally sighed and shut the alarm off. He almost thought about falling back asleep, that was of course, until he heard his dad asking Nora if he was awake yet.

Derek sighed heavily and threw the blankets off of his body. Rubbing his eyes, he got up and went straight for his dresser and opened the third drawer down. Pushing untidy clothes out of the way, he pulled out a pair of jeans and slipped them on over his boxers.

The rest of the morning went on just like normal. Well, as normal as Derek's life ever was, he supposed. When he walked into the kitchen, his dad and Nora were hugging and kissing each other goodbye as Nora readied herself to leave for work. "Ew, no." Derek said simply, covering his eyes and grabbing the first thing he saw on the counter - an apple - and rushing himself out the door before his other step-sister Lizzie could tell him to stop being so immature.

He didn't eat the apple, but instead handed it off to his best friend Sam when he met him in the school parking lot. School was never Derek's strong suit, and the only thing that stopped Derek from skipping most of his classes, in all honesty, was the fact that he was popular. You know how the saying goes, girls wanted him and guys wanted to be him. And Derek thoroughly enjoyed the attention that he got.

As he and Sam walked through the front doors of their school and towards their locker, Sam's girlfriend, Jenna, came running towards them with Jenna's best friend, Kate.

"Sammie!" Jenna exclaimed as she ran and jumped into Sam's arms. Sam's face reddened as he hugged her, and Derek pretended to be barfing behind her back. Kate rolled her eyes and Derek abruptly stopped as he saw Kate watching him.

"Uh.. okay, well yeah.." Derek said awkwardly, as he turned to walk away. "I'll see you later... _Sammie_." Derek winked and Jenna let go of Sam immediately, shooting Derek a very nasty look.

Derek, however, simply laughed quietly and walked away. Kate was Derek's ex girlfriend, and for some reason, never forgave Derek for breaking up with her. Even though he was sure she understood that their relationship wasn't anything serious, she apparently thought differently. Derek just didn't "do" serious relationships. Never had and probably never will.

The average school day was never overly entertaining so Derek wasn't expecting much out of his day. He went to class after boring class, barely understood a word of what was going on in his Spanish Language class as his teacher, Mr. Garnot, had recently established a new rule in the classroom that if you were to speak, you could only speak in Spanish, and sat through what felt like the most boring lecture of his entire life in Government and Economics. As the bell rang at the end of his last class, he was one of the first out of his seat.

He had almost forgotten about the dream completely, that was.. until he saw her.

Standing at her locker, trying to fit way more books than would fit into her backpack, was Casey. Derek furrowed his eyebrows curiously as he remembered the dream he had the night before. Why, though, he wondered, was Casey the one who reminded him so clearly of it?

"Dude, move" Derek, who hadn't realized he was standing in the middle of the hallway, stepped to the side and said "Sorry, man" to the guy trying to get by with a girl.

Derek watched Casey for a second longer before simply muttering "Hmm" and calling it off as pure coincidence.

"Guess whooooo?" A giggling girlish voice suddenly appeared behind him. He felt his backpack slide off his shoulder, and somebody's hands slide up to cover his eyes. Derek smiled. Feeling his way up his face, he removed the girls hands from his face and turned around. "Lisa, hey."

"Damn it, Derek! You were supposed to _guess_!" Lisa said, faking utter disappointment and pouting her bottom lip up at Derek.

Derek laughed, "Sorry."

"So," Lisa said in a loud voice, "are we still on for tomorrow night?"

Admittedly, Derek had forgotten all about his date, but he played it cool. "Of course! Right now though, um, I gotta go," He said, pointing behind him, but I'll pick you up tomorrow, say, around 7?"

"Can't wait!" She replied, winking and turning to walk away. She caught up with a friend halfway down the hall who had been watching and giggled excitedly. Derek turned to walk away and saw that Casey had left. The hallway was slowly dying out of people as Derek slung his backpack back over his left shoulder and walked out the door.

Derek spent a few hours hanging out with Sam and their friend Ralph before heading home at around 6:30pm. When Derek walked through the front door and in to the living room later that night, his first view was of his little brother Edwin, and then Lizzie, sitting on the couch watching TV together. They weren't fighting over the remote, which struck Derek as odd, but brushed it off. They were bound to agree to watching some shows together at some point. As Derek walked further into the room, dropping his backpack onto the floor next to the coat rack, he saw Marti, his little sister, sitting on the floor next to Lizzie, coloring in an apparent newly bought coloring book. She was the only one to look up as he came into the room. "Hey, Smarti." Derek smiled at her. "Hi, Smerek!" She said joyfully as Derek made his way up the stairs.

He was halfway up the steps when he saw Nora putting food on the table. "Food time?" Derek asked excitedly.

Nora giggled, "Yes. Could you tell Casey to come downstairs for dinner too, please?"

Derek huffed as he made his way up the stairs and towards Casey's door. He picked up his hand to knock, but was caught off guard by the music he heard playing in the background. Familiar music. Something like pianos and violins. He froze in mid-air, and, then, just as quickly as that happened, wrenched the door open and found Casey dancing around her room, stopping almost immediately as Derek entered.

"_Casey_?" Derek whispered, after a moment of stunned silence, looking at her like he'd never seen her before. Casey furrowed her eyebrows and looked at Derek expectantly. "Uh, what?"

Derek didn't know what to say. And he found that sensation increasing as he looked her up and down. Derek felt as though his entire world was spinning, and he hung on to Casey's door for dear life. He suddenly remembered every detail of the dream he'd had the night before.

"Um... d-dinner. Dinner's ready." said Derek, getting himself together and walking slowly out of Casey's room. But he didn't walk downstairs for dinner, instead, he turned the other way and walked straight into his room, slamming the door shut behind him.

Derek threw himself onto his bed and turned to face the ceiling.

Taking a deep breath and burying his hands into his head, he muttered "_The girl was Casey."__  
_


	2. Chapter 2

[**I am so sorry for taking so long to post the second chapter, I mean, wow. I posted the last chapter and was sure I would get this chapter up fairly quick, but January ended up being a crazy month for me. So much crap happened, that I just wasn't able to post this chapter in a good amount of time. I swear I'm not usually this way. Please enjoy this chapter and please let me know what you think!**]

* * *

Derek didn't do much over the next few hours. He mostly stayed in bed, staring up at the ceiling, and trying as hard as was possible to block Casey from his thoughts. But, to say it was difficult, would be an understatement. Casey seemed to control his every thought, and he desperately wanted that to stop. The dream seemed to play over and over again in his mind. He couldn't remember much, but he did remember one important thing: the immense attraction he felt to his step-sister, Casey McDonald. At the end of the day that wouldn't easily forget that, nor would it be so easy to forget how his heart seemed to fly into his throat as he realized that Casey was the girl in the dream.

Edwin was the first to check on him that night. "Derek?" Edwin asked, knocking on the door. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Edwin." said Derek, though he really wasn't fine at all. "Go away." There was silence but Derek could still feel Edwin hesitating at the door. Derek huffed into his pillow. "Edwin!" Derek shouted. "Leave!"

Derek then heard footsteps slowly descending from his door. Not long after that, Derek's dad came into the room, without knocking, asking if he was alright and wondering why he hadn't come downstairs for dinner. Derek didn't answer. He simply stuffed his head into his pillow once again and waited for his dad to leave the room. It took a minute, but eventually, his dad did leave, and Derek heaved a sigh of relief as he looked up and saw the door closing.

Of course his family was worried about him, and he understood why. Surely Casey had gone downstairs and told the family about how crazy Derek seemed, and, anyway, it's never a good sign when Derek Venturi doesn't want to eat. Thinking back, Derek wished he'd been more in control of his emotions. How could Casey not think he was crazy, barging into her room out of nowhere like that? Derek was beginning to think something was really wrong with him.  
"What are you freaking out over? It was just a dream." Derek told himself, over and over again. People have crazy dreams all the time. Dreams about flying and reading minds and all sorts of crazy things that would never really happen. And this just had to be one of those dreams.

But that still didn't explain why it felt so real.

"No stop thinking like that" Derek mumbled, his voice barely audible over his face in the pillow. "It. Was. Just. A. Dream."

Derek's stomach growled. He turned to look at the clock as he swung his legs off the side of the bed and sat up. It was 11:43pm, and most of his family had to be in bed by now. His younger siblings: Edwin, Marty and Lizzie, were no doubt asleep, or at the very least, in their rooms. And Derek was almost positive his dad would be asleep, as he had to get to work early most mornings. Nora most likely went to bed around the same time Derek's dad did. That only left one person: Casey.

Casey was alway the hard one to keep track of when it came to things like this. Derek always thought it strange; she was absolutely the most predictable person Derek had ever met in his life, yet somehow - and try as he might, Derek could never figure out how - she was alway surprising him.

Derek could easily narrow it down to three things she coud possibly be doing at this hour. Sleeping, reading, or studying. Derek hoped beyond hope that she was sleeping, as he crept through the hallway and stopped right at Casey's bedroom door. He could see at the crack in the door that the light was off. For Derek, it was a good sign. He pushed his ear to the door and heard quiet, shallow breathing. Happy with his conclusion that Casey must be asleep, he headed downstairs and into the kitchen.

Walking into the kitchen, Derek opened a cabinet and pulled out a bag of chips at random. He considered making a ham and cheese sandwich, but, after deducting that he was too lazy to do so much work, he held on to his chips and made his way back upstairs.  
Derek felt like he was sneaking in as he once again crept through the hallway, careful not to make any noise. Usually, of course, he wouldn't care about being this quiet in his own house. But the last thing he wanted was to face Casey, and he was going to do whatever he could to make sure that wouldn't happen. He knew that Casey had no idea of the dream, but that didn't entirely matter; he wasn't about to let her find out. Derek made it to his room without being caught, and he sighed as he flopped back onto his bed and opened the chips.

His mind drifted to Casey once again as he stuffed the chips into his mouth. Casey, he knew, left a journal by her bed that she wrote in every morning. She called it her 'dream journal', as she wrote what she'd dreamed of the night before. Derek remembered the time he accidentally let slip that he'd snuck into her room and read it.

* * *

They were all sitting at the dinner table. Derek looked down at his plate. Meatloaf, green beans, and scalloped potatoes. Derek, of course, didn't care much for the green beans. But he was hungry, and it didn't matter much, anyway. The scalloped potatoes and meatloaf were so good that it drowned out the taste of the green beans.

"So, how was everybody's day?" Nora asked from the seat next to him. Casey sat directly across the table from Derek, so when he looked up, he saw her quietly and calmly chewing her food, one by one. Quite the opposite of the trainwreck that was Derek when he ate. She, Lizzie and Marty all spoke in unision. "Fine!" They all said in the same enthusiatic tone. Derek rolled his eyes. If he didn't already know any better, he thought to himself, he would think that Marty was a McDonald, and not the Venturi she very well was.

"What are you rolling your eyes at?" Derek's dad asked, "You haven't told us how your day was. You haven't either, Edwin."

Edwin started on about this new kid in his class, Katherine, and how they were, to use his exact term, 'almost going out'.

"How can you be almost going out? You either are or you aren't." said Lizzie, who was sitting next to Casey and directly across from Edwin.

"I'm just, you know, working on her. She wants me. I just have to warm her up first." Edwin replied, in a very matter of fact way. Lizzie rolled her eyes and started back on her food, while his dad smiled down at his plate.

"And what about you, Derek?" Nora asked.

Derek simply shrugged. "T'was good." He said, through another mouthful of food. Derek noticed Casey roll her eyes. "What?" he asked, looking up at her.  
"You could maybe swallow your food and then speak."

Derek picked up his fork and shoveled another bite of meatloaf into his mouth. Casey smiled sarcastically as she picked up her fork and stabbed a scalloped potato onto it.

Nora looked up at Casey and smiled, "So, did you talk to Mr. Brown about your paper? Did he give you a better grade?"

Derek swallowed his food. "Oh, God, Casey you aren't grade grubbing again, are you?"

Casey ignored him. "Yeah, he fixed my grade."

"Casey, seriously?" Derek asked.

Casey took a deep breath and turned her head away from her mom and back towards Derek. "Yes, Derek. I felt I deserved a better grade, and obviously Mr. Brown did as well, since he gave me one."

"Mr. Brown?"

"Yes, Derek. My AP Physics teacher?"

Derek shoved another biteful of food into his mouth and looked down at his plate. All of his food was almost gone, except for a few bites here and there. "Wait.." Derek said, his brain working fast to remember something, "Isn't that the class you had that weird dream about?"

Casey stopped eating almost instantly, and looked up at Derek. "What are you talking about?"

"Yeah," Derek said again, looking right back at Casey, "Yeah, that's the dream where you-" Derek stopped short, realizing what he'd done. Shit. She wasn't supposed to know that he had read that journal.

Casey looked like she could kill Derek, and Derek felt the almost immediate need to leave the room.

"Deerrreeekk! Why do you always have to go reading my stuff?!" She asked. She sounded rather angry, but in the usual Deerrreeeekk! You-did-something-wrong-I'm gonna-kill-you sort of way that he was used to. Derek shrugged and said simply, "It's fun?"

Casey then marched up to her bedroom, and Nora went on to explain about Casey's so called dream journal, and his dad went on to tell him how wrong it was to read people's private and peronal belongings. Lizzie and Marty told him that he was a jerk, and Edwin patted him on the back and made Derek promise he would tell him what was in the journal later. Derek promised he would, but didn't really mean it.

Casey remained angry with him the rest of that night, and the following morning as they were getting ready for school. But by the time they'd actually arrived at school, it was as if nothing ever happened. That's just how it was between the two of them.

* * *

Nora told Derek that Casey truly believed all of her dreams meant something, so she wrote them down to keep track. It sounded good to Derek, and ever since then, he'd almost believed it as well. But after the dream he'd had, he was beginning to doubt that all over again. But then again...

Derek rolled the chip bag up and set it on his nightstand. He then stood up and walked towards his computer desk and sat there, staring at it. Maybe Derek didn't know much, but if he knew anything, he knew that he was not about to have that dream again. He would stay up all night if he had to.


End file.
